The Manifesto of the Erotic Chess Story

My Dear Friend,

I am happy to present to you the first in a wholly new genre of literature of which I am the originator, the Erotic Chess Story. No mere pornographic or instructional novelty, the Erotic Chess Story presents the reader with the refined and Apollonian abstraction of chess with the lively Dionysian seductions of the prurient narrative, to create a Supreme Fiction which engages both the Powers of Reason and Vital Force as A Total Art for Human Beings.

Copernician as this innovation is, I have prepared for this cover as to prepare the reading public for its reception as I might hope to at length in some future work, The Manifesto of the Erotic Chess Story.

First Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must convey, with absolute accuracy the moves of an actual, playable chess game, much like a chess problem, in such a manner as the experienced player can follow. This is one of the singular aspects of the Erotic Chess Story, along with its eroticism. The intellectual narrative suspense is created through these intriguing presentations and much salutary lessons are learned.

Second Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must never, however tempting, resort to the use of sexual metaphors for chess or chess metaphors for sex. The strain on both enterprises is only too apparent. Dialogue such as “I see now that I am en prise” or “We enjoyed each other en passant” are strictly to be avoided. Indeed, it would be best that all metaphors imported from the Persian game be generally proscribed from all human communication.

Third Principle: The Erotic Chess Story should likewise avoid sedulously, the temptation to simply write itself as some sort of erotic contest in which chess is played for sexual favours. The liaison of Chess and Eroticism must be more subtle, more organic and less of a stretch.

Fourth Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must not resort to the atmospheres of the Gothic and the Decadent, much less the psychologistic language of thrills and depravity so often obscuring more often than illuminating the malodorous dungeons of such narratives, populated as much with italics as ill described perils and tortures. The suspense of the Erotic Chess Story comes from its chess. The thrills from the puissant titillations of its language. No more. Likewise, its language should be simple, unaffected and unbelabored like moves in chess as opposed to a endless jumping morass of semicolons linking panicked fragments, like checkers.

Fifth Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must be wholly original, and not some literary dandy so done up as to become wholly transvestite, some familiar tale done up as a chess story as a sailor in too much make-up. Likewise, the particulars of its plots must be wholly unique and original to the genre, and not simply “strapped on” to the end.

Sixth and Final Principle: The Erotic Chess Story must, above all, be Erotic.

With these donnés well established, I find that I have touched upon my piece and must therefore proceed with our game, as, I anticipate, to our mutual delight and edification.